A-B = $0.14 Cubic meter or $3.5 mmBtu India’s existing price of $4.2 is close to the Chinese increased price of $4.7 mmBtuAccording to China’s top gas producer PetroChina the new prices would increase its profitability by 20 billion yuan ($3.27 billion) every year from 2014.

· The average price of imported gas to Asia is roughly $14.59 per million British thermal units, or roughly $0.55 per cubic meter.

· China increase prices and hiked them by 15% in July 2013. India will be doing it in April 2014.

Monday, February 10, 2014

Politics is essentially left. Right is non-political. Rightist forces are traditionally too close to religion and business to moderate them.

Left with its natural inclination for people’s concern is oriented to keep religion away from completely controlling people’s life and preventing business to ruthlessly purse its profit maximizing ways.

Therefore, it is natural that close to elections, even the die-hard rightists begin speaking the language of the left - poverty elevation, free food and housing etc.

The latest entrant into Indian politics AAP is inherently leftist, because it cannot afford to be right. However, it refrains from calling itself socialist, mainly because wearing a left straitjacket is unfashionable in the 21st century India.

AAP does not seem to be oblivious of the reality that big business has a massive role is fomenting crony capitalism in the country. Corruption is not a matter of demand and supply. Corruption is because of the dilution of politics resulting from the amalgamation of demand and supply- business-politician nexus.

Unlike, the communists, AAP does not intend to confront the capitalist directly by launching an all out war against the rich. Instead, it intends to decouple the state machinery from the tweezers grip of big money and set it free to act against the defaulting capitalists.

In one of the TV shows, a common man told Arvind Kejriwal that in the absence of right to education, he was forced to be corrupt. Much like his boss, he too wanted his children to get educated in Delhi Public School. He further said that till the time right to education was enshrined in the constitution and its provisions implemented, Lokpal would continue to be inconsequential.

A traditional leftist would have jumped from his seat and hugged the common man and asked him to join the revolutionary moment to throw out the capitalist.

On the other hand, Arvind Kejriwal’s solution rested on the premise that since private schools cannot be closed, our endeavour is to make the government schools so good that even moneyed people would come to them.

Arvind Kejriwal is thinking of positive change by clearly stating his agenda. The communists, on the other hand, are engaged in typical Delhi politics where they are desperately trying to stitch together a coalition of third parties that are financed by big business. So rather than talking to the public, the communists are engaged in political management. They refuse to learn from history.

Their single point agenda of preventing communal forces have landed India in such a state where the communal forces do not even need a mask. They are openly projecting Modi - the ugliest communal face - as the future leader of India.

If only the left had followed a politics of principles and not towed their boats behind Nehru, India would have been a different country and Communist party would have been our AAP.

Monday, February 3, 2014

Paper presented at the Institute for Chinese Studies and University of
Oxford conference on: “India-China in the 20thand 21stCenturies: Where History and International
Relations Meet – Part II”on 6-7
January, 2014 at ICS, Delhi

The Banning Of ‘ Sikast-e-Zindan’
and the Domestic Politics Of 1962 War